


wild eyes! skinny jeans!

by bystander



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22674883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bystander/pseuds/bystander
Summary: renjun's mother worries about him giving his heart away too easy. well, she doesn't need to.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	wild eyes! skinny jeans!

“Don’t be like this,” orders Donghyuck. “I’ll be back.”

Renjun makes this kind of sticky noise in his throat. Where he’s going in the meantime, Renjun knows, is off to Mark, who is perfectly lovely but also perfectly not in love with Donghyuck. And then, Donghyuck will be upset and Renjun will have to cook kimchijiggae even though he’s not the cook between the two of them and they’re going to have to stay up late and have a deep conversation with some movie running in the background that neither of them care about, and then they’ll run through some variant of the same situation in about a month.

It’s not like Renjun wants to say, oh, no, don’t meet your best friend, I think your ongoing campaign to break your own heart is stupid, so he drops it and flips a page in his textbook. A clear cue for Donghyuck to leave. Renjun pretends he doesn’t feel the molten gaze burning the side of his face and Donghyuck pretends he has any sort of moral ground. He does leave, though. He does not close the door gently on his way out.

Renjun’s attempts at revising go for five minutes before he closes his book again. It’s not a problem; he’d studied the material already last night. Architecture is great, but Renjun thinks he’s got all out of flying buttresses that he needs at the moment. Instead, he pulls out his laptop and boots up Youtube.

His recommended page always has his back, and he plays a Moomin short compilation and settles into the living room couch. There is a stain near the armrest. Renjun rubs the material with his finger. It blends in, but he’s still irritated because Donghyuck always insists he won’t spill dinner (he does) and eats with Renjun in the evenings when he’s doing homework. The company is nice, but not so’s the lingering smell of old curry. 

Renjun spends less time worshipping Moomin than thinking about what he wants for dinner, so he leaves the video playing and rummages through the fridge. There is: leftover stir-fried pork, eggs, and rice. It’s more or less what he had for lunch. He can leave it for tomorrow, Renjun reasons. He’s saving money that way, really. And he doesn’t want to be alone.

He calls Jeno. Jeno picks up in a second. He sounds out of breath, but also dopey happy like he usually does. He’s probably working out. “Lonjin!” 

“Keep calling me that and I’ll break your wrists,” says Renjun automatically. Renjun can hear Jeno pout over the phone.

Not only, Renjun reflects, did Jeno have to have the face that he did, but he was also jacked. And, astoundingly, even on top of that, cute. Some people had so much luck you suspect someone else must have drawn the short end in the cosmic lottery draw.

“Sure,” says Jeno. Renjun imagines Jeno’s eyes slightly drooping and downturned, and decides to forgive him. Boys, Renjun thinks darkly, were so dumb. “What did you need, Injun?”

“Let’s get dinner?” Renjun asks. He runs through their options: the greasy American diner, chicken, the Chinese place off central. The convenience store if they were especially desperate, but Renjun’s a whole 20,000 won from what he considers dire straits, so he’s good.

Jeno huffs over the line--he’s probably doing something nasty, like pull-ups in that sleeveless shirt he always liked to wear. It’s probably lucky the school has good insurance, or they’d be sued for all the mysterious accidents that tended to occur at the gym around 6 pm.

“Actually,” says Jeno, “good timing. Me and Jaemin were going to get burgers. Is Donghyuck coming?”

Renjun leans his weight against the kitchen counter. “What? Oh, I don't think so. He’s off with Mark.” Renjun is such a good actor. He is so smooth. Maybe he should’ve majored in theatre instead of visual arts. He even had the voice for it.

Jeno hums. “Meet you in the diner in 30, then? You can pick up Jaemin on his way, he probably could use the company.”

It was Thursday, so Jaemin was getting off from his date with his freshman mentee. Jisung was alright, Renjun concluded, even if he always looked a loud noise from passing out.

“Mm. See you, Jen.”

“See you, Jun,” cheers Jeno. Renjun allows a moment for his heart to warm, then smiles and hangs up.

When he was younger his mother had always told him that he gave his heart away too easily. Renjun was highly unimpressed by this observation. “I don’t like anybody,” he’d told his mother. He was in the middle of a story about beating the other team in soccer in PE, and was cross to have had his story interrupted. “People are annoying. I don’t think half my class know how to use deodorant.”

His mother had just smiled, and Renjun continued, offhandedly, saying that anyway Sicheng-ge was gross too but did you know he had a wicked cross kick and he runs so fast and he saves me an extra milk carton when I’m late to lunch.

Renjun had always thought it was silly, but he kind of liked that his mother thought he was a soft nice kid even if he got sent home sometimes for knocking kids’ knees out when they said something stupid. She saw out the nicest parts of him and chose to love him fiercely for it. She was obviously wrong and had the worst case of rosy lens, but Renjun didn’t mind.

He’d let her think so up until he was waiting to board his flight to Korea for university and his mother said it again, this time as a warning. “Be careful, Renjun. You hurt a lot easier than you think.”

Renjun frowned. “Don’t be like that, mama,” he says. He shifts his weight to accommodate his luggage. He’d dropped off his baggage but he had two bulging carry-ons for the stuff he absolutely needed. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m tough.”

She looked like she didn’t believe him, but let it go and squeezed his ribcage broken one last time. And then in a whir Renjun was off to Seoul, the big city that seemed impossibly large and didn’t think about the best version of himself only his mother seemed to see anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> god i can't write ship fics because i make everyone fall in love with everyone
> 
> lmk what you think <333


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